Ever since the first online music service Napster was formed back in 2000, the debate of “free” music continues today. It has been commonly argued that with the appearance of such free music sites, artists could no longer make a living off of the commercial music industry. However, a former songwriter claimed that as people listen to music for free, the musician’s fame increases tremendously. When music came out in records, CDs, or cassette tapes, people would only listen the popular ones due to their budget. With new online music services like Napster, people started listening to a much more wide variety of music than just the top hits. Due to this, smaller artists began to be known to the public. Online music service created a boom in the commercial music industry, thus skyrocketing the sales of many musicians due to the countless number of people who buy the physical copy of the music for their personal gain.

In the modern world, music has become so popular that you can simply search the name of a song or musician in a search engine and download the music from the first page of results. Yes, it is proven that free music increases the popularity of musicians tremendously. However, artists wonder how much they are actually losing due to the billions of downloads everyday. One analyst reported that profits up to 10 times could be achieved if all of the downloads were paid. Yet another analyst claims that if there were no free downloads, the songs would only be listened to a 1/100th of the number of times that they are being listened to right now. People all around the world continue to argue in the debate of whether or not online music service and free music are worth the trade-off of the increased popularity from which many musicians benefit.